Tag Archives: parenting

Simplicity

30 Saturday Aug 2014

Posted by in Life with kids

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Tonight I baked a bunch of vanilla cupcakes. From a mix.  And then I frosted them with buttercream vanilla frosting.

My boy loves vanilla.

We take him to ice cream, and, offered a dizzying array of options, he chooses vanilla.

We took him to 31 Flavors, and he found something exciting: triple vanilla.  It has golden vanilla, french vanilla, and vanilla.  He was in heaven.

Another store offered vanilla in three colors.  Boom.

So, I made vanilla.

This isn’t going to be a big, themed birthday party.  As we hunted through Dollar Tree today to round out our party supplies, I realized that the theme essentially was “Red.”  That’s Jack’s favorite color.  Red napkins, red cups, red streamers.  Some furry mustaches for his guests to stick on which will, according to my children, be used to revitalize “Sharks and Minnows.”  I can’t wait.

We have been to some very fun birthday parties: teas, bowling, an entire Egyptian Pyramid.  There have been beautiful cakes and impressive pinatas.  And we have had a lot of fun.

But this mama had one kind of party in her this year: a simple party.

So, we’re playing some games.  They involve running around, popping balloons, more running, candy, and more running.  Oh, and beach balls.  And our youth building, since the park is going to be sitting beneath questionable skies tomorrow with a better-than-likely chance of thunderstorms.  But my little guy is very happy.

As I poured my vanilla batter into the generic pastel cupcake liners, I thought, wow.  This is pretty homemade.  I don’t have a single theme!  No fancy anything!

But I think I’m entering a season in which simplicity is the most appealing option.  Those vanilla cupcakes look pretty good.  I didn’t even make a pinata, but I can’t wait to watch the kiddos stomp on balloons until they release their little treats.  Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Simplicity.  It may not characterize all of our birthday parties, but I’m looking forward to its role in this one.

Globes with Dents

13 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Homeschooling

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

In one week, I will finish my first day of homeschooling.

Last week,  in my excitement over leading two precocious children through the rich history of the ancient world, I bought a globe.

It’s not a fancy globe, but my children were suitably happy with it, tracing trans-Atlantic flights with their soft fingers and circumnavigating the equator with a few deft spins.  I remembered my childhood fascination with maps, atlases, and globes, and smiled inwardly at our shared interest.

But as I moved the globe aside this evening, I made a discovery: after approximately four days of living in our house, the globe has a dent.Image

Yep, a big gouge right across Mexico.

Humph.

I liked our globe.  I liked its round perfection, its little ridges marking the topography of the world, and here we are, one week in, and bam.  A big dent.  Like someone just went and bashed his car door right into Monterrey, taking out part of Baja and Mazatlan and even Corpus Christi with it.

And then suddenly the globe felt a little like my whole homeschooling career, not even yet begun.

Here I am, with one mere shelf cleared off for curriculum, with a host of ideas and questions and way more going on than any homeschooling mom in her right mind should have going on, and I feel a lot like a dented globe.  Not one of those antique globes at the far end of a spacious library with mahogany panels and leather-bound volumes, not an expensive globe glowing golden in a shaft of light with little flecks sifting silently before it.  Not picture-perfect. Not worthy of Pinterest.

It’s still colorful.  Useful.  You can still see how far it is to China, and you can marvel at how remote Antarctica is, and you can learn the things you want to know.  But imperfect. Scars from being handled.  Shortcomings.

Then I think back to why I decided to undertake this journey anyway.

I have two gifts, one age five, one age six.  They can read. They both like math and art and science.  They are insatiable learners.  And I want to take all that budding interest and feed it and nurture it and see what it turns into.  I want to get my hands dirty and help them to uncover what makes them flourish.  I want to sit beside them and coach them through the challenges of pushing yourself when something comes easy and trying even if you can’t do it perfectly the first time, or the second.  Or the third.

I want them to come away from first grade more excited about learning than they are right now.

And when I’m honest with myself, I must say that they couldn’t care less that the globe is dented, or that I don’t have our whole homeschool year planned, or that I’m not even totally sure what we’re going to do on Monday.  They’re going to learn from this dented globe.

Then, on a more profound level, I remind myself that when the God of the universe formed them, he already knew everything about the woman he was giving them as their mother and teacher, dents and all.  And he knew we’d be at this crossroads right now.  He knew the other things he’d called me to do.  And he has it all well in hand. Indeed, he has even orchestrated a set of circumstances which remind me that I’M THE DENTED GLOBE.  Even before our homeschool of awesomeness has begun, it’s already imperfect.

Because I am.  And so are my kids.

Now, I feel just about ready to begin.

Building A Cathedral Takes Time

05 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by in Process

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

There was a great story circling Facebook a few months ago.

You can picture her easily. She is a mom with a college degree who has chosen to stay home with her posse of small children. A few years ago, her life was characterized by lectures and long discussions over cups of strong coffee. She wrote and read and analyzed and penned compelling reviews of her favorite books.

Now she feels lucky when she is able to string two coherent thoughts together. If she bothered to update her Goodreads account, it would list the titles of books that are less than ten pages long and made of cardboard. But she wouldn’t trade her new life for anything in the world.

Anyway, one day this mom’s friend returns from a fabulous tour of Europe. And after sharing with their group of friends some of the highlights of her trip, she pulls out a gift for her stay-at-home friend. The giftwrap and ribbon fall away to reveal a coffeetable book richly illustrated with photos of the most beautiful cathedrals in Europe.

The friend explains that the young mom is like a cathedral builder. The days are long, and sometimes it’s hard to see what you’re building. But at the end of a lifetime there will be some thing beautiful; something bigger than yourself that you have helped to shape.

I really resonated with that story. I think it is a helpful reminder not only to mothers of young children, but to any of us who are chipping away daily at tasks that are both mundane and profound–mundane up close, profound when viewed from a distance. We spend our hours in the care and nurture of small people or aged people or students or coworkers or each other, iron sharpening iron, sometimes in minute detail. We may have a life goal of becoming more like Christ, watching our own progress and sometimes observing none until we look far over our shoulders. We may invest, day by day, in the child whose attitude seems never to change or the teenager who does not seem to be listening, only to discover decades later that ours were shaping words.

The cathedral builder chipped away at a stone, set it in its place, and those single stones stacked one atop another formed a cathedral. Sometimes it took a lifetime.  Sometimes it took five.  But it all started with a raw stone, and a mason, and a chisel. It started with hard work and diligence.

So, what are your raw stones?

Mine are my kids and my husband, I can see that.  We shape one another in how we speak to each other, how we encourage one another.  We have so much growing ahead of us.

I survey other stones strewn about.  Well, there is my own life, my goals for myself, my artistic pursuits.  What am I working on that will benefit those around me? How are my pursuits shaping my own heart and soul?

Raising my eyes above my own family and my self, I am working to shape the community around me.  It’s something I get to do nearly every week as I usher God’s people into his presence through music at our church.  I want us to behold God and to marvel at God, to wonder at the Cross, to be brought low in confession and raised up in forgiveness and have hearts open to the Word of God preached.  I want our small chapel of living stones to be raised into something that brings God glory and delight and joy.  I want our little part of the Kingdom of God to reflect him brighter than the moon reflects the sun when its full and gleaming.  I want to be part of shaping that.  Music is one of our tools.

There are other tools I have used more frequently in the past, and I long to take up again.  Methods of study, disciplines of thought and writing, tools that shape me and my community.  Where did I put those tools?  I am sure they are here somewhere.

I am interested in your tools, your raw stones, your vision.  Have you caught a glimpse of what you are building?  What have you learned in the process?

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨